this was apparently also wrong. Now that she’d told him, they sat in the back of the limo in silence and tension even worse than when she’d been wondering when he was going to bring up how much he hadn’t wanted her.
“You’re gritting your teeth,” she said softly, trying to fix this before it got worse. “I’m fine, Liam. You should be fine too. You were right.”
“I don’t want to hear again that it was the only course of action. I know that. I still know that, but that doesn’t make this better.”
“Why? Are you such a caveman that you’re angry that I’ve had boyfriends?”
“No. God, no. I’m not angry.”
“Have you told your face that? I don’t think your eyebrows got the memo. Did you ever notice that the angry characters in children’s shows either have a unibrow or they have just really heavy, straight brows that come together in an angry way?”
“I never played a Muppet,” he joked, if that tone could be called a joke.
She scooted up against him, mirroring the way he’d dragged her to him earlier, and lifted his arm so she could get under it. “See? I’m completely at ease with you now. I understand limits. I understand why you felt that way. I really do. At least now. You felt like you should be more like a brother to me, only I didn’t feel that way. You—”
“Couldn’t have won. Let’s stop talking about it.”
“You were the one who wanted to talk.”
“And now I want to stop talking,” he said, sharply enough that she leaned forward, out from beneath the arm she’d just wrapped around herself, and slid away from him on the seat again.
He was going to be the end of her sanity. Should she have trusted that instinct to keep hiding things? She’d not trusted them because when she had, all those years she’d been wrong.
Mr. I-Know-What-You’re-Thinking-Because-of-Your-Feet would never have that problem. He studied body language, she studied bodily injuries. Not the kind of emotional injuries that might help her understand him.
And maybe that was why he was good at reading people. Maybe it wasn’t just study but something he’d developed during a rough childhood.
She sank back into her spot on the seat and looked toward her window as he uttered an expletive and dragged her back to him.
This time, rather than wrap an arm around her, he twisted and grabbed her by the hips. One second she was on the seat, the next she was in his lap. “You’re going to hurt your ankle!”
“Shut up, Grace.” He caught her by the back of the neck and pulled her against him, his mouth immediately on hers.
His lips, soft and sweetened with the lingering taste of berries, stroked and nibbled, coaxing her mouth open within seconds.
Her arms rested against his chest, but as his tongue sought hers and the kiss deepened, the fighting from the past long minutes fled her mind. Instinctively, her arms slid around his shoulders as his went around her. Wide, hot hands pressed against the cool skin of her bare back and on down to her hip to keep her close to him.
She’d seen him kiss countless women, and had always wondered what it was like even while envying them. Even when her coping mechanism was to pretend that she didn’t think anything about him at all.
It felt like a drug. Like it heightened her senses and tuned her into him so acutely that her heart changed rhythm to match his beat. She breathed his air and plowed her fingers into his hair to kiss him better, get him closer. Every kiss dragged her deeper into him.
A kiss like no other. If it was because of all his practice, she didn’t care.
If it was because she’d been starved for it for so long, had imagined it so many times, she didn’t care what that said about her either.
Their time together was almost at an end. Soon they’d be back at the clinic, and frequent visits would dwindle to only a few and then back to none. None, because that was normal for them. They’d done all they could to unweave all their ties six years ago, and she had no illusions that he’d start unweaving them again once he no longer had to have her with him. He might still want her, but there were so many women who could be whatever he wanted. A girlfriend without their baggage, without their obstacles, without jeopardizing the friendship he held dear.
This bubble that New York cast around them, it felt like a different planet. A place where they could talk about that stupid trench coat, and a place where inexplicable anger and hungry kisses could confirm that old desire still clung to them both. The only place it could exist.
The door they sat beside opened, a blast of humid air hitting them both. Liam jerked his head back, eyes glazed and panting.
“Sir?” the doorman said. “Want me to close the door back up?”
Tonight they were at the front entrance. She’d forgotten that they weren’t sneaking in and out through the back since he’d deigned to use the cane. A flash went off. Then another. Stupid cameras.
She felt him retreat before he’d moved an inch.
The wall came up, and he put her down gently. The next instant he had his cane and had climbed from the car.
This time he didn’t wait for her to get his elbow but started forward with the cane and a stronger hobble.
She got her bag and accepted a hand out from the doorman, thanking him before she went to catch up with Liam.
Something had just happened, she just wasn’t sure what.
* * *
Two days later, decked out in her classy, cotton, roomy, embroidered polo and slacks, Grace walked beside her morning patient at the clinic, holding on to the small woman’s support belt as she used the double bars to take shaky but supported steps toward the end.
Finally, a patient who didn’t confuse her.
A patient who liked her and listened to her advice.
“You’re doing great. Don’t rush.”
“I want to sit down and the sooner I get to the end, the sooner I get to sit down,” Mrs. Peters said.
“And every step gets you closer to needing to sit less. You’re doing so well. I can honestly say you’re the best patient I have had in days.”
The woman stopped midway and Grace kept holding on to the support belt, as she always did.
“I need just a little breather.”
“Take your time. You standing here without walking is still making you do work.”
“Yes, it is. I don’t know how I got so weak.”
Grace knew. Stroke. It had been caught fairly quickly, but it had still had time to do some damage.
“Muscle weakens really fast. Many of the people who come visit me here don’t actually even have direct accidents or illnesses to blame for
